After a surface of a substrate is cleaned and rinsed, the surface of the substrate has to be dried. Examples of a substrate drying method include spin drying and isopropyl alcohol (IPA) drying. However, if the surface of the substrate is dried by these substrate drying methods, Laplace pressures caused by surface tension of remaining liquid are applied to patterns on the substrate, and therefore the patterns may collapse. Accordingly, the collapse of the patterns has been prevented by reducing the Laplace pressures by silylating the patterns on the substrate. However, if the patterns on the substrate are formed of a material which cannot be silylated, the silylation cannot be applied.
Therefore, solidification drying has attracted attention as a new substrate drying method. The solidification drying dries the surface of the substrate, for example, by supplying a solidifying agent containing liquid onto the cleaned and rinsed substrate, precipitating the solidifying agent on the substrate, and sublimating the precipitated solidifying agent. However, this case has problems in which handling of a sublimation solidifying agent is difficult, and a decompression chamber for facilitating the sublimation is required.